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How Keyword Mapping Can Help Your SEO And Content Strategy

Did you know that every page of your website holds the potential of getting successfully ranked with the help of keywords? Keywords can help you get a boost in your search rankings. They can make a campaign run effectively, drive more organic traffic, widen a website’s reach, and structure its content. They can even generate traffic for the decaying posts. Here’s a How Keyword Mapping Can Help Your SEO and Content Strategy:

Getting a boost in your search rankings is based upon how effectively and how strategically the keywords have been researched, shortlisted, and added to your website’s pages. So playing with and testing keywords is part of keyword mapping.

What is a Keyword?

If you’re reading this and you’re not even sure exactly what a keyword is then here are some definitions to get familiar with:

Keywords

According to Moz.com, “Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about”. They are the words and phrases that people type into the search engines, sometimes known as “search queries.”

As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your web page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results.

LSI Keywords

LSI Keywords takes the idea a step farther. This is where the search engine algorithms understand exactly what topic you are writing about.

So how do search engine algorithms know which topic you are writing about? They do so by looking at the LSI keywords. Basically, the Googlebot scans your page searching for closely related terms which can help it understand your content better.

Here are some Latent Semantic Indexing keywords that Google might have found on your pages if you were writing about one of the topics given above.

So where possible it’s good to think about LSI keywords at the same time as you are writing using the main keyword.

Keyword research isn’t just about checking how many searches a particular keyword has — it’s also about exploring the many varied ways that people use language to research an idea or topic.

And by researching what people search on and using this research to create relevant content, you are also increasing the chances that you drive the right traffic to your site — traffic that is more likely to convert.

What is Keyword Mapping?

Keyword mapping is a process of the constructive placement of chosen keywords in a web page’s title, alt tags, headings, URL, meta description, etc. aimed at driving organic traffic to your website and its rank advancement in the search engines.

Have you heard about the GoogleBot Crawler?

Google has assigned the job of crawling every single piece of information on the internet including the basic components of keyword mapping (alt tags etc.) to its GoogleBot crawler to give the users relevant results for their queries.

It is important to refrain from “keyword stuffing”, in other words, putting lots of instances of the keyword into your blog post or article, because the GoogleBot Crawler will not acknowledge it as an authentic piece of information and will then push it towards the end of the search engine result pages.

Keywords should only be inserted where they naturally fit and add value to the existing content.

Following a Process of Keyword Mapping Can Generate Results

By following this process of keyword mapping, your website will get the stamp of authenticity, and your webpage will be organically ranked by Google.

A content strategy based out of keyword mapping can improve your SEO and eventually, the ranking.

So How Do I Do Keyword Mapping?

The process of keyword mapping requires time and research but the more you invest in it, the better it will be for your website. The good news is the process will gradually become easier for you with even more effective results.

#1. Do Some Initial Keyword Research

Create a spreadsheet of the keyword data you are compiling, it is easier to track that way. You can make different columns in the sheet as per your needs and fill the fields with related data.

Start with getting a picture of your website’s SEO and keyword data – use a keyword tool like RankWatch’s Keyword Suggestion Tool to get long-tail and short-tail keyword suggestions. This will give you a detailed account of your website’s SEO and keyword related actionable data, i.e. the keywords that are generating traffic and positive impact along with the ones that are doing the opposite.

Look up and record search volumes for sets of keywords – have a look at the search volume of the keywords to build a list of popular keywords related to your business’ nature. Using these, you can build a content strategy around the primary and LSI keywords to drive more traffic.

Tip: You can use Search Volume Tool to determine the search volume of the selected keywords.

Examine Competitors – check what keywords your competitors use to generate traffic. Having a look at your competitors’ approach can benefit your business in planning a better content strategy and improving your SEO.

2. Start Using the Keywords Strategically on Your Content

After you have researched and shortlisted the keywords which are most relevant, you can start to create a content strategy around them to help generate traffic to your website. Keyword mapping helps your website get efficiently crawled and ultimately ranked.

Title

The headline you click in the search engine results is the title. Basically, it describes the content of the webpage in a concise, most accurate way. You need to place your chosen keyword within your title.

Meta Description Fields

The short concise paragraph you see below the title on search engine results is the meta description. It describes the content of the webpage more than the title in about 50 to 300 characters. Involving the primary keyword in the meta description increases your chances of getting ranked but not all users search for primary keywords so if you can, you also need to include LSI keywords as well. Which in this case are “blogging and blog”.

Make sure your meta description fields are filled in correctly and contain the keyword.

H1 – Heading. The “H1” or the header tag is the heading of the page. It is somewhat similar to the title and both it and your title needs to include your chosen keywords.

Alt Attribute. Alt attributes are used in HTML to make it easier for the crawler to read it and index your page accordingly. So, if you include the keywords in the alt attribute that also increase the chances of your web page getting indexed and shown.

Slug. The slug is yet another element that defines what a particular webpage is all about. It is included in the URL, alongside the website’s name. A Slug is an identity of a particular page, it should include the chosen keywords for better SEO optimisation, because the spider crawls through it too.

3. Refining Your Content

Now that you know some basics about what to do with keywords, researching them, where to put them on your blog post, you can start to refine your content, both new and old.

Create Content around Popular Keywords

After shortlisting your keywords, the next job is to create your content around those keywords. Keep in mind keyword density (no overstuffing!) And of course, keeping the article relevant to the keywords you have chosen.

Use Keywords Together that Hover Around The Same Subject

After doing keyword research, you can sort them in groups depending on the categories, the subject, and if they are close to one another. Grouping keywords around a subject also helps you prepare your content strategy for new content you create.

Rework On The Old Posts With Updated Keywords

If you have numerous posts on your website but a majority of them lack the essential information then now is the time to do a bit of updating.

For instance, if you have an old post and you know that it had the potential for generating traffic but somehow it isn’t, then take a look at it, analyze if you have included the primary and the LSI keywords in those posts and if not, update and make sure all the titles, headers, images and your meta description are as good as they can be.

Keywords play a major role in the search engine rankings of a website. And by doing this keyword mapping, you’re giving your blog the best chance of being found by search engines and returned as relevant. You’re also improving your content strategy because you will be writing to terms that your prospective customers are searching on.

Over to you now. Was this article on how to go about keyword mapping helpful? What have you done for your business content? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

About Sahil Kakkar

Sahil is the CEO and Founder of Rankwatch - a platform, which helps companies and brands stay ahead with their SEO efforts in the ever growing internet landscape. Sahil likes making creative products that can help in automation of mundane tasks and he can spend endless nights implementing new technologies and ideas. You can connect with him and the Rankwatch team on Facebook or Twitter.